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I'll Give You Something to Cry About
The Rileys, of Bar Harbor, Maine, negotiate the changes in their family as they head to Ford’s Theatre, in Washington, DC, for their son’s violin performance. Sweet, comic, and exuberant, the novella also tells the story of a transgender adolescent as she comes to terms with her family, world, and sexuality.
Jennifer Finney Boylan is the author of 13 books, including the national best seller She’s Not There. A professor of English at Colby College, she is also the national cochair of GLAAD and a trustee of the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. She lives in Maine with her wife, Deirdre, and their two sons, Zach and Sean.
This is a short e-book published by Shebooks—high quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women.
Jennifer Finney Boylan is the author of 13 books, including the national best seller She’s Not There. A professor of English at Colby College, she is also the national cochair of GLAAD and a trustee of the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. She lives in Maine with her wife, Deirdre, and their two sons, Zach and Sean.
This is a short e-book published by Shebooks—high quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women.
- GenresFiction
81 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 26, 2014
17 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Finney Boylan
31 books1,555 followersJennifer Finney Boylan is a widely praised author and professor.
Edward Albee summed up her oeuvre in 1988: -- "Boylan observes carefully, and with love. [Her] levitating wit is wisely tethered to a humane concern…. I often broke into laughter, and was now and again, struck with wonder."
Jenny's memoir, She's Not There, published by Broadway Books in 2003, was one of the first bestselling works by a transgendered American; until 2001 she published under the name James Boylan. She's Not There, currently in its eighth printing, is popular both as a textbook in high schools and colleges as well as with readers's groups. The paperback edition contains a "readers guide" in addition to the main text, which consists not only of Jenny's insights on "a life in two genders" but also includes an afterword by Pultizer Prize winner Richard Russo, whose friendship with James, and later with Jennifer, provides part of the books narrative.
She's Not There won an award from the Lambda LIterary Foundation in 2004, the year after its initial publication. The book has since been published in many foreign editions, and was an alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Anna Quindlen called it “a very funny memoir of growing up confused, and a very smart consideration of what it means to be a woman.”
Her 2008 memoir, I'm Looking Through You, is about growing up in a haunted house. While trans issues form part of the exposition of the book, the primary focus of I'm Looking Through You is on what it means to be "haunted," and how we all seek to find peace with our various ghosts, both the supernatural and the all-too-human.
Jenny has been a frequent guest on a number of national television and radio programs, including three visits to the Oprah Winfrey Show. She has also appeared on the Larry King Show, The Today Show and been the subject of a documentary on CBS News’ 48 Hours. She has also appeared on a wide range of local and syndicated television shows, as well as NPR's Marketplace and the Diane Rehm show. In 2007 she played herself on two episodes of ABC's "All My Children." She has spoken widely around the country on gender and imagination, at venues including the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and the New Jersey State Theatre. She has given plenary and keynote speeches at conferences on diversity and scholarship around the country, and at colleges and universities including Amherst, Wesleyan, Dartmouth, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Duke, Bucknell, Dickinson, Bates, Ohio State, Middlebury, Gettysburg, Georgia State, the University of Puget Sound, and Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She has spoken at law firms, at corporate events, and at bookstores from Seattle to Vermont.
Her nonfiction has appeared on the op/ed pages of the New York Times, in GQ magazine, Allure, and Glamour. She is also an ongoing contributor to Conde Nast Traveler magazine; her most recent work there was on Easter Island, published in the January 2007 issue.
Boylan's first book, a collection of stories entitled Remind Me To Murder You Later, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1988. Her first novel, The Planets, was published in 1991 by Poseidon Press. (Simon and Schuster). Loosely based upon the classical piece of music by Gustav Holst, The Planets followed the lives of several fictional characters in the real town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which has been afflicted by an underground coal fire since the early 1960s.
Her second novel, The Constellations follows the lives of several of the characters from The Planets, some of whom flee from angry cows, discover a latex brain, and begin a life of dognapping.
Her 1997 novel, Getting In, published by Warner Books, focused on four high school students who go on quests to get into college. The novel was optioned for film by Renny Harlin and Geena Davis, and Jenny was tapped to write the initial screenplay for New Line Cinema.
Born in 1958 in Valley Forge, Boylan
Edward Albee summed up her oeuvre in 1988: -- "Boylan observes carefully, and with love. [Her] levitating wit is wisely tethered to a humane concern…. I often broke into laughter, and was now and again, struck with wonder."
Jenny's memoir, She's Not There, published by Broadway Books in 2003, was one of the first bestselling works by a transgendered American; until 2001 she published under the name James Boylan. She's Not There, currently in its eighth printing, is popular both as a textbook in high schools and colleges as well as with readers's groups. The paperback edition contains a "readers guide" in addition to the main text, which consists not only of Jenny's insights on "a life in two genders" but also includes an afterword by Pultizer Prize winner Richard Russo, whose friendship with James, and later with Jennifer, provides part of the books narrative.
She's Not There won an award from the Lambda LIterary Foundation in 2004, the year after its initial publication. The book has since been published in many foreign editions, and was an alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Anna Quindlen called it “a very funny memoir of growing up confused, and a very smart consideration of what it means to be a woman.”
Her 2008 memoir, I'm Looking Through You, is about growing up in a haunted house. While trans issues form part of the exposition of the book, the primary focus of I'm Looking Through You is on what it means to be "haunted," and how we all seek to find peace with our various ghosts, both the supernatural and the all-too-human.
Jenny has been a frequent guest on a number of national television and radio programs, including three visits to the Oprah Winfrey Show. She has also appeared on the Larry King Show, The Today Show and been the subject of a documentary on CBS News’ 48 Hours. She has also appeared on a wide range of local and syndicated television shows, as well as NPR's Marketplace and the Diane Rehm show. In 2007 she played herself on two episodes of ABC's "All My Children." She has spoken widely around the country on gender and imagination, at venues including the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and the New Jersey State Theatre. She has given plenary and keynote speeches at conferences on diversity and scholarship around the country, and at colleges and universities including Amherst, Wesleyan, Dartmouth, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Duke, Bucknell, Dickinson, Bates, Ohio State, Middlebury, Gettysburg, Georgia State, the University of Puget Sound, and Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She has spoken at law firms, at corporate events, and at bookstores from Seattle to Vermont.
Her nonfiction has appeared on the op/ed pages of the New York Times, in GQ magazine, Allure, and Glamour. She is also an ongoing contributor to Conde Nast Traveler magazine; her most recent work there was on Easter Island, published in the January 2007 issue.
Boylan's first book, a collection of stories entitled Remind Me To Murder You Later, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1988. Her first novel, The Planets, was published in 1991 by Poseidon Press. (Simon and Schuster). Loosely based upon the classical piece of music by Gustav Holst, The Planets followed the lives of several fictional characters in the real town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which has been afflicted by an underground coal fire since the early 1960s.
Her second novel, The Constellations follows the lives of several of the characters from The Planets, some of whom flee from angry cows, discover a latex brain, and begin a life of dognapping.
Her 1997 novel, Getting In, published by Warner Books, focused on four high school students who go on quests to get into college. The novel was optioned for film by Renny Harlin and Geena Davis, and Jenny was tapped to write the initial screenplay for New Line Cinema.
Born in 1958 in Valley Forge, Boylan
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 22, 2015
Does contain a trans teenage girl, as advertised on the box. Things she thinks about: regret for not being able to remember baseball facts anymore, Will She Be Able To Afford Surgery, What If This Man Learns I'm Trans, What Are The Difference Between the Men's Room and the Women's? I was excited when she and her child prodigy brother start to have a conversation, but the conversation peters out with a six-year-old trans shaming her in a way that seems maybe difficult to believe.
There are things that are okay here, and definite points for hallucinatory Abe Lincoln breathing fire and condemning a child for daring to defy THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR, as well as a really casual use of time travel. But there is trouble when a fiction character gets up in the middle of a story from the piece of writing she is working on and wonders exactly what the point of what she is writing is. In the end, this feels like a John Updike plot: a man whose two Possible Paths in life are symbolized by two women, with the plot being entirely about REGRET FOR THE WOMAN NOT CHOSEN, dread at the prospect of impending death, realization that What Is Best In Life is not to see one's enemies driven before one or w/e but To Love And Be Loved In Return, in an ending that is sweet--physical acts of caring in fiction are always good--but not (to use Gross Workshop Words) earned.
I read this directly after finishing the ghost memoir, I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted, basically because I wanted to read JFB fiction (which I've never done), and it's interesting in a way that reminds me of a thing I've read about DFW: people in DFW's life knew that a much more nuanced emotional portrait was available in fiction than it ever can be in memoir. And that really, really comes through here, but in a way that I guess was disappointing: there are these hints of much more interesting, darker and messier emotional territory beneath, way more than in the memoirs, and that's what I want more than I want holding pattern conclusions about how the glass is basically half full, really, honest injun.
There are things that are okay here, and definite points for hallucinatory Abe Lincoln breathing fire and condemning a child for daring to defy THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR, as well as a really casual use of time travel. But there is trouble when a fiction character gets up in the middle of a story from the piece of writing she is working on and wonders exactly what the point of what she is writing is. In the end, this feels like a John Updike plot: a man whose two Possible Paths in life are symbolized by two women, with the plot being entirely about REGRET FOR THE WOMAN NOT CHOSEN, dread at the prospect of impending death, realization that What Is Best In Life is not to see one's enemies driven before one or w/e but To Love And Be Loved In Return, in an ending that is sweet--physical acts of caring in fiction are always good--but not (to use Gross Workshop Words) earned.
I read this directly after finishing the ghost memoir, I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted, basically because I wanted to read JFB fiction (which I've never done), and it's interesting in a way that reminds me of a thing I've read about DFW: people in DFW's life knew that a much more nuanced emotional portrait was available in fiction than it ever can be in memoir. And that really, really comes through here, but in a way that I guess was disappointing: there are these hints of much more interesting, darker and messier emotional territory beneath, way more than in the memoirs, and that's what I want more than I want holding pattern conclusions about how the glass is basically half full, really, honest injun.
January 16, 2021
In this novella, the dysfunctional Riley family is en route to Washington D.C. where their teenage son Otis, a violinist, will be performing at the legendary Ford’s Theatre. The road trip is symbolic of each family member’s individual journey. The characters — especially Alex, a transgender teen — are brilliantly rendered and with its suspenseful plot, Jennifer Finney Boylan creates a dark-humored gothic mood reminiscent of the best of Flannery O’Connor.
July 11, 2021
I found this novella about a family taking an uncomfortable road trip to be quite moving. Each member of this particular family is struggling with something that would, in fact, be worth crying about - Riley has to tell his family some terrible news: Otis is terrified of everything; Alex just wants to be acknowledged and supported. Each character takes their own journey during the novella's pages, and I thought the author did a fantastic job of bringing each to life. I enjoyed the reading of this very much, and will definitely read more by this author.
June 3, 2024
I loved this short book about the power of love. Although I often read books that focus on the LGBTQ+ community, I wanted to start off Pride month with a book about the ways people show that love is love.
December 22, 2022
Thank you narrator and author for this incredible story.
January 18, 2023
ah, it’s was fine. cant really find a way to describe why it didn’t hit me that hard. it felt… kinda pat? idk
July 18, 2014
The Rileys are a family in the midst of several transitions and an unusual road-trip. Two parents struggle with disease, the possibility of divorce, and memories of the past. One child tries to face the world unapologetically as a trans woman, while her younger brother faces his own fears. Meanwhile, their grandmother never holds back the truth, however painful it may be.
I was really blown away by this book. It had a rough start (I felt bombarded by several awkward cultural references), but then the story drew me in and broke my heart a little.
My biggest emotional soft spot is probably for family stories which focus on the ultimate isolation of each individual (see The Ice Storm). This theme is at the crux of I’ll Give You Something to Cry About.
It’s short and sweet. It’s engaging and beautifully written. It has eerie flashbacks, a sob-worthy ending, and a set of characters that I could deeply empathize with. I highly recommend I’ll Give You Something to Cry About!
My favorite quote:
Thank you to NetGalley and SheBooks for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
I was really blown away by this book. It had a rough start (I felt bombarded by several awkward cultural references), but then the story drew me in and broke my heart a little.
My biggest emotional soft spot is probably for family stories which focus on the ultimate isolation of each individual (see The Ice Storm). This theme is at the crux of I’ll Give You Something to Cry About.
It’s short and sweet. It’s engaging and beautifully written. It has eerie flashbacks, a sob-worthy ending, and a set of characters that I could deeply empathize with. I highly recommend I’ll Give You Something to Cry About!
My favorite quote:
Thank you to NetGalley and SheBooks for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
July 31, 2014
This book had a lot going on, and at times it was nicely written, but I just couldn't get into it as much as I would have liked. Its characters are a bit flat at times, and I just couldn't immerse myself in their lives enough to love them. They were realistic at times, but I never really felt I knew them. Maybe if this had been a full length novel, the characters would have had time to be fully developed and multidimensional. As it was, they were all sketches of interesting people, but we only get a glimpse of their full lives.
Alex, the transgendered teen in the book, gets more page time than the others, but even her story was hard to relate to. Each character could have had a fully engaging novel on his/her own, so it's a bit disappointing that not one of them gets a chance to really shine in this novella. I loved the flashbacks, but even they are brief. This seems more like an abbreviation of a novel than a complete novella on its own.
Recommended for: People who want a quick read about deep subjects.
Content: 14+ for some language.
Alex, the transgendered teen in the book, gets more page time than the others, but even her story was hard to relate to. Each character could have had a fully engaging novel on his/her own, so it's a bit disappointing that not one of them gets a chance to really shine in this novella. I loved the flashbacks, but even they are brief. This seems more like an abbreviation of a novel than a complete novella on its own.
Recommended for: People who want a quick read about deep subjects.
Content: 14+ for some language.
January 16, 2015
Holy crap. wow.
Bravo, Jenny Boylan. You've outdone yourself-- I eagerly look forward to your next work!
Bravo, Jenny Boylan. You've outdone yourself-- I eagerly look forward to your next work!
May 25, 2015
Oh my gosh! I loved this Novella!!! It started out as just "okay" then it got better and better. When it started on Alexs point of view, thats when I got hooked in the most. Reading about her crush on Lucas and her feeling accepted. Then when he found out about her being trans when they were making out, and wondering what was going to happen. I really enjoy story lines like this one. I was happy for Alex when everything turned out well. Im not trans but I do like reading about trans people, fiction or non-fiction. I also really like the Doors quotes at the beginning. Oh, and I couldnt figure out what the last words Lucas said at the end, but I guessed he accepted Alex for who she was
July 31, 2014
This was surprising and I loved it. A very unusual family goes on a road trip and struggles to find themselves. There is a man with bone cancer, a woman who wants to be free of family obligations, a hilarious grannie, a transgender youth, and a young music prodigy whose favorite toy seems to be a Hello Kitty doll. It is definitely worth a read and it's a novella, so it's super quick.
August 15, 2014
Wonderfully drawn book bringing together history of our country as well as personal history in a novella that is insightful as well as absorbing. In their struggle with difficulties and loss, the Riley family has lessons for all of us.
July 31, 2014
Simply brilliant. Great tension, character descriptions and depth. Good pace, couldn't put it down. Tears at the end, a smile, a sigh. All Good. Actually, all GREAT.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews